Within 24 hours of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors’ Dec. 16 vote to deny Sable Offshore the permit transfers it needs to revive the Las Flores pipeline, a separate governing body responded to the Texas-based oil producer’s appeal to a higher power.
On Dec. 17, the U.S. Department of Transportation granted Sable’s request to transition future regulatory oversight of the pipeline from the California Office of the State Fire Marshal to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).
Linda Daugherty, acting associate administrator for pipeline safety with PHMSA, told Sable that the administration notified the state fire marshal about the shift.
“PHMSA agrees with your determination that the Las Flores pipeline is an interstate pipeline,” Daugherty wrote in a letter to Sable President and CEO J. Caldwell Flores.
In April, a handful of local environmental agencies sued the state fire marshal for granting Sable a waiver that allowed the company to continue working toward resuming oil production without formal public noticing protocols in place.
In conjunction with the lawsuit, a Santa Barbara County Superior Court judge approved an injunction in June that ordered Sable to halt all prep work tied to its anticipated restart of the Las Flores pipeline.
According to Daugherty’s Dec. 17 letter, Sable reached out to PHMSA in late November, which prompted the federal agency to initiate a formal review of the Las Flores pipeline. The investigation included on-site inspections over a three-day period in December.
State fire marshal representatives accompanied federal investigators during these site visits, according to Daugherty, who also outlined PHMSA’s broader inspection of the Santa Ynez Unit as a whole.
“PHMSA also reviewed Sable’s written procedures and records and conducted field observations of the Las Flores facility, the pump stations at Gaviota and Sisquoc, the control room in Santa Maria, and the offshore Harmony platform,” Daugherty wrote.
Daugherty noted that PHMSA’s evaluation confirmed that the Las Flores pipeline met certain thresholds to be classified as an interstate pipeline, based on the agency’s “interpretation on the delineation between federal and state jurisdiction.”
The pipeline system’s transportation of crude oil from offshore platforms in federal waters, or the outer continental shelf, to the Santa Ynez Unit’s onshore processing facility and continued transportation to Pentland Station terminal in Kern County were among the determining factors, Daugherty wrote.
Sable’s initial outreach to PHMSA followed the Board of Supervisors’ Nov. 4 vote for staff to bring back findings to deny Sable’s county permit transfer requests.
Although Sable currently owns the Las Flores pipeline, the county permits to resume oil production operations at the site are still under the name of its previous owner, ExxonMobil.
“A lot of people out in the public think that by transferring a name on a permit that somehow it’s stopping production of oil at this facility. The truth is they’re already producing oil at this facility,” 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson said at the board’s Dec. 16 meeting. “We can continue to fight this fight up here where we don’t transfer it. At the end of the day, Sable is still going to be there.”
The board ultimately approved staff’s findings to deny the transfers with a 3-1 vote. Nelson dissented, while 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann recused herself.
“My participation in the Sable issues has been somewhat convoluted,” Hartmann said at the hearing.
The FPPC, which previously gave Hartmann the green light to vote on resolutions related to Sable, was under the impression that her property in the Santa Ynez Valley was between 1,000 and 900 feet away from the Las Flores pipeline, based on a crude map and analysis that county staff provided.
“About a week and a half ago, Sable provided information stating that the pipeline runs within 8 feet of my property,” Hartmann said at the Dec. 16 meeting, “something, I would note, they could have provided previously.”
This article appears in Dec 25, 2025 – Jan 1, 2026.